Implementing Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) with the Java EE 5 SDK

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Service-oriented architecture (SOA) describes a category of composite applications composed of service provider and service consumer components. SOA segregates business logic and offers location transparency for the service providers and consumers.

The SOA approach lets you replace or upgrade individual components in the application without affecting other components or the process as a whole. Moreover, you can independently specify alternative paths through which the components in the application exchange messages.

This article presents architectural concepts and language constructs necessary to developing a SOA composite application in Java EE 5. It then presents an example application, deployed in the Java Business Integration (JBI) environment. The example uses HTTP/SOAP binding components and WS-BPEL and Java EE service engines, illustrating how these components can be orchestrated to solve a business problem.

Download and Read the Full Article (PDF).

Programming Tools

• Download the Java EE 5 Tools Bundle
• Download the files related to this Java NetBeans™ Enterprise Pack 5.5 project (179 KB)

Demonstration Videos for Creating Loan Processing Example Application

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1. Creating the LoanProcessor EJB WebServices Project
2. Creating a new BPEL Module Project and packaging the required WSDLs and XSDs
3. Creating the BPEL-JBI Composite Application Project and deploying to the JBI Meta-Container
4. Testing, debugging, and switching between the BPEL and JPDA debuggers for the deployed JBI Composite Application Project

Gopalan Suresh Raj is a member of Sun's Research and Architecture team. His expertise spans multi-tier Enterprise Component Architectures and Distributed Object Computing. For the past 15 years, Gopalan has been designing solutions with Java and C++. He is the author of many books and articles on Java technology.

Binod P.G. is a staff engineer in the Sun Java System Application Server development team. In addition, he shares ownership of the open source Generic RA for JMS project. He is a member of JDBC expert group and is the maintenance lead of the Connector specification. He has been designing and developing enterprise class products for the past 10 years.

Keith Babo focuses on enterprise integration architecture for the Java platform as a staff engineer in Sun's Java Web Services division. He is a member of the JSR 208 Expert Group and an active contributor to the 208 Reference Implementation and to the OpenESB project.

Rick Palkovic is a staff writer for Sun Developer Network. He has written about SunOS and Java technologies for longer than he likes to admit, composing everything from man pages to technical white papers.